Day 294: Garage Sale, Motorcycles, & Pens

We wrapped up the garage sale today - It was crazy terrible waking up 5:40, but the sale was busy all day long. Mom and Alan, and Ashley each made over $100 today, Eric and I made over $40, then Alison and Paul & Deb each made some good money.  All in all, a pretty successful sale.

Eric ran some errands on his motorcycle, and then rode the bike to work in Lawrence.  He said it was a really windy ride, but that he's really loving riding.  Kristie joined us in the afternoon and it was Mom and Alan, Paul and Deb, Ashley, Alison, Kristie, Eric, and me hanging out all day.

Alan did a pen making demonstration for Kristie and me, and we took a trip to his hobby shop to pick out some new pen blanks.  I even got to carve half of a new pencil for me, woo!  Then Kristie and I went to dinner at Outback with Mom, Alan, Paul, and Deb.  Eric made it back to Olathe after work and we got to hang out for a bit before going to bed, ready to wake up early again tomorrow.

 Look at how shiny his bike is!  Eric off to run errands and to go to work on his bike.

Alan working on carving Deb's pen.

Before and after shots of the pen Alan made for Deb.

Mom and Chaos napping.

 Sadie chilling out with Alan.

Juneau is not amused that we gave her bowling balls to play with!

 Kobi is a sad pup, she would much rather be inside eating french fries.

Paul and Alan trying to make a Mexican Batman toy fly!

Day 293: Selling & Shredding

The garage sale started today and went well for the most part - Eric and I sold a few little things, both sets of our dishes, and my trombone.  Mom, Alan, and Ashley fared a lot better - Mom and Alan sold some exercise equipment, and Ashley sold a little bit of everything!  Eric worked the sale in the morning and then went to work, I went to work and then headed to Olathe in the evening.

They had already put away the garage sale for the day, but I had a good time playing with Andrew and Jacob, who were both visiting for the evening.  Later on Alison came over and we did Jillian's shredding video together. It kicked our tails, but we survived!  Last, but not least, I finally got my Otterbox case for my phone!  It's finally protected from all of the torture I put my electronics through - my tough camera and super protective phone case are quite important to their survival.

No phoning it in!  We shredded like crazy people!

Day 292: Staging the Garage Sale

Last year we had a garage sale around this time to get rid of some extra junk. Jess and I did pretty well. This year we're doing it again, and we don't have as much, but whatever we don't sell this time we're leaving behind or donating to Goodwill. So today after class I went to Jess' parents' house to start helping move stuff out to the garage and prepare for the first sale day tomorrow. We moved and cleaned up a piano, some exercise equipment, and various other items. In return for this first night of work I got some chinese food! :D Now it's off to bed to get a little sleep before we start setting up at 5:30 tomorrow morning.

I didn't get any pictures of us setting up, so here's a picture of Addy "relaxing" with her face on our games chest.

Day 287: Spring Cleaning

WOW!  I was crazy productive today!  We're preparing for a multi-family garage sale next weekend, so Eric and I have been combing the house for stuff to sell.  Last night we went through our storage space and discovered that we have already de-junked that, so the only remaining space with "stuff" we don't plan to keep is the...dun dun DUNNNN...office!  So when Eric left for work at 10:30, I got up and started picking at the office.  It started with "here's one thing I can sell" and "I'd better wash this blanket", and quickly escalated into completely reorganizing, de-junking, and cleaning the room.  Hooray for having a functional office and guest room again!

After Eric got off of work at 7, we headed out to see Steven, Leslie, Grant, and Edie.  Edie made everyone dinner and cupcakes for the lovely Leslie's birthday.  We had salad, cheese and bacon quiche, mushroom and asparagus quiche, and vanilla cupcakes topped with strawberries.  We narrowly missed out on the fun of the police hunting for Steven, Leslie, and Grant because they were playing airsoft in the woods.  When we went back to their apartment, we had some drinks, played "Start the Party" and watched "Get Him to the Greek".  All in all, another successful Saturday!

A newly organized craft space - hidden away in the closet for me to use (and hide) as I please!

 Eric starting the party!

 Jessica waving the white flag!

 Happy (late) birthday, Leslie!

I poured my first ever layer shot, we called it an Apricot Grenade - grenadine, apricot schnaaps, topped with 151!

Day 172: Selling Like Noone Else!

We've been really geared up about our journey out of debt recently, and have have been searching for some new ways to raise our income.  Through the spring and summer we made a few hundred dollars by selling a lot of books and video games on Half.com, but now that most of the items have sold we only make about $5 every other week on Half.  We also had a garage sale in August where we made a few hundred dollars.  Between getting rid of a lot of stuff when we thought we were going to be kicked out of our apartment, and selling a lot, we don't really have too many non-essentials.  But "not too many" is still more than we need, and I'm on a mission to sell it!

I've started posting ads on Craigslist with things like the dishes we had before we got married and my trombone from high school.  I've also posted ads for babysitting and pet sitting over the holiday break, and have come up with some great leads using that!  Wish us luck coming out ahead this December!

 One of the many pieces of junk taking up space in our closets - we sure brought it all, but now we're getting rid of it!

Day 43: No More Camera!

Today was an errands day right from the start.  Eric and I slept in and when we got up, he had to go straight to work.  I headed out to Olathe and took 2 truckloads of leftover garage sale things to Goodwill.  Then I went to Best Buy to deal with a few things.  My iPod Touch has a small crack in the screen, so I was going to use my extended warranty to get that replaced.  I'm only 7 months into the 2 year warranty, and it will only replace the iPod once.  So, we're going to wait for awhile on that in case we drop it and shatter the screen or in case the crack gets worse.

Next I had to deal with my camera.  Since July 23rd, there has been a black spot on the lens that has left a spot on all of my photos.  This was out of the 2 week return/exchange period, but the camera does have a 1 year manufacturer warranty.  So Best Buy took my camera and will have it back to me, all fixed up, within about three weeks... Yes, I have to go THREE WEEKS without a real camera!  Yikes!

Back to the camera phone it is!

I also went "Back to School" shopping and got some new pants and shirts, yay!

Day 42: Garage Sale Part 2

The second day of the garage sale went pretty well - I don't think we had as much traffic as we'd expected for a Saturday and the people who did come were lowballing our prices.  Alison and Zach spent most of the day with us, which was great.  I taught him how to catch a frisbee and he spent his day doing that and watching tv/playing video games with Kris.  Eric had to leave pretty early in the morning for work, he wanted to call in sick so he could hang out in the driveway with us!

Playing with the panoramic mode

Zach helping us sell things!

Zach catching the frisbee.

Andrew made this great face when he got squirted in the face with water.

That night Eric went to a family barbecue with his parents, Brian, Jen, and Shannon.  He was great and brought home some yummy steak, baked potato, and grilled corn on the cob.  I stayed home and had a girls night with Kristie and Alison.  We watched Addy roll around in catnip, funny YouTube videos, played New Super Mario Bros. and watched an episode of Drawn Together.

Pachelbel Rant!

Day 41: Garage Sale Part 1

Wow, today went really great!  Eric and I woke up at 5:30, along with Mom, Alan, Kris, and Sarah.  We made cinnamon rolls and got to work setting up the garage sale.  Nearly everything was in place by 6:30am.  It started to sprinkle and we weren't too worried about it, then it started to pour!  For about 20 minutes we moved everything inside the garage, and the rain stopped. 

Eric and I made $120 today - probably off of about $200 in original priced items.  It looks like we won't make our $300 goal, but this is definitely money in the bank, so no complaining there!

This is my fanny pack baby sling!  Andrew quite liked it!

We found this bible in the garage - It was printed in 1856! I'm going to look into how much restoration would cost on it, because this is a really really cool thing to have in the family!

Tonight I took Andrew and met Paul and Deb at the park for the free Liverpool, Beatles tribute band, concert.  They were trying to beat the record number of people playing "Hey Jude" on the kazoo - 5,300.  I highly doubt that they had anywhere near that many people, but it was lots of fun.  Andrew had an awesome time at his first concert, and I had a wedding cake flavored snow cone - it tasted just like wedding cake!!!

Liverpool taking the stage.

Andrew and I humming along.

Paul and Deb contributing to "Hey Jude"!

Day 40: Preparation

I spent the day working with Jack while Eric spent his day off putting in some good work at home.  He packed up some garage sale stuff, did lots of laundry, and took a friend to the airport.  In the evening we packed everything up and brought it out to Olathe.  We then hung out in the garage pricing and rearranging items in preparation for the big day! 

Our goal is to make more than $300, which will offset the cost of the plane ticket that we bought for Eric's friend.  It's possible that the gift to a friend in a time of need could prevent us from finishing up the final payment for my credit card next month - but we are okay with that possibility.  We still think that we'll be able to finish up my credit card and Eric's credit card by our first anniversary!

This is actually a picture from Friday because [gasp!] I didn't take any pictures Thursday because the camera was dead.  The signs above our heads say "Dave Ramsey says, 'Sell it All!'"